midnight in paris
Paris. It’s as much a location as a map as a fantasy. A place easily flown to but never reached. The idea of Paris is as much a part of western culture as the Big Mac, consumerism, or infallible markets.
Americans, especially, have a total hard-on for the Parisian Ideal. Mr Allen does an impressive job making a movie that simultaneously perpetuates this and laughs at it simultaneously.
A self-described hack screenwriter, Gil (Owen Wilson), piggy-backs on a trip to Paris with his fiance, Inez (Rachel McAdams), and her parents. They are uninterested in Paris and he’s infatuated, specifically with Paris of the 1920s (and in the rain).
Gil and Inez are planning their wedding, which is reason enough to wander about shops. They meet Paul (Michael Sheen) and Carol, who happen to be there. Paul is a cartoon know-it-all, Carol is a non-character.
One night, while Inez and Paul go dancing, Gil decides to walk back to the hotel. He gets lost and, after a clock strikes midnight, is picked up by a small group of people in a suspiciously dated automobile.
After an ideal voice-over-credits intro, long conversations about nostalgia and Paris, and meeting half the film’s characters, the story finally gets rolling.
Ultimately, it’s about living in the present. A quote from Pompous Paul in the beginning is confronted and analyzed in an impressively beautiful way:
Nostalgia is denial – denial of the painful present… the name for this denial is golden age thinking – the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in – its a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.
Allen does a great job transitioning between the past and present. The direction is subtle and quite scenic. The sets are great and really transport you into the scene.
Best of all, the Allen-isms are distributed among the characters. Know what I’m talking about? Those moments where the characters are so clearly doing a Scarlett Johansson-, Will Ferrel-, and Larry David-as-Woody Allen. (Granted, Larry David as Woody Allen is basically Larry David.)
Since Allen has stopped starring in his own films, these moments have been so distracting and terrible, they’ve been hard to watch. This film, with the Allen-isms spread about many characters, softens them. The dialog, typically brilliant, is much easier to digest.
Without Paris, this would be an adequate movie. There are plenty of “I wish I lived here when” places that could have worked. But using the Paris Fantasy as the backdrop, and specifically the Golden Age chosen, make this a truly gorgeous film.